The Black Death peaked in Europe between 1348 and 1350, with an estimated third of the continent's population ultimately succumbing to the disease. Often simply referred to as "The Plague", the Black Death had both immediate and long-term effects on human population across the world as one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, including a series of biological, social, economic, political and religious upheavals that had profound effects on the course of world history, especially European history. Symptoms of the Bubonic Plague included painful and enlarged or swollen lymph nodes, headaches, chills, fatigue, vomiting, and fevers, and within 3 to 5 days, 80% of the victims would be dead. Historians estimate that it reduced the total world population from 475 million to between 350 and 375 million. In most parts of Europe, it took nearly 80 years for population sizes to recover, and in some areas, it took more than 150 years.
From the perspective of many of the survivors, the effect of the plague may have been ultimately favourable, as the massive reduction of the workforce meant their labor was suddenly in higher demand. R. H. Hilton has argued that the English peasants who survived found their situation to be much improved. For many Europeans, the 15th century was a golden age of prosperity and new opportunities. The land was plentiful, wages were high and serfdom had all but disappeared. A century later, as population growth resumed, the lower classes once again faced deprivation and famine.
Death toll
Figures for the death toll vary widely by area and from source to source, and estimates are frequently revised as historical research brings new discoveries to light. Most scholars estimate that the Black Death killed up to 75 million people in the 14th century, at a time when the entire world population was still less than 500 million. Even where the historical record is considered reliable, only rough estimates of the total number of deaths from the plague are possible.
Europe
Europe suffered an especially- significant death toll from the plague. Modern estimates range between roughly one third and one half of the total European population in the five-year period of 1347 to 1351 died during which the most severely-affected areas may have lost up to 80% of the population. Contemporary chronicler Jean Froissart estimated the toll to be one-third, which modern scholars consider less an accurate assessment than an allusion to the Book of Revelation meant to suggest the scope of the plague. Deaths were not evenly distributed across Europe, and some areas were affected very little, but others were all but entirely depopulated.
The Black Death hit the culture of towns and cities disproportionately hard although rural areas, where most of the population lived at the time, were also significantly affected. Larger cities were the worst off, as population densities and close living quarters made disease transmission easier. Cities were also strikingly filthy, infested with lice, fleas, and rats, and subject to diseases caused by malnutrition and poor hygiene. The population of the city of Florence was reduced from between 110,000 to 120,000 inhabitants in 1338 to 50,000 in 1351. In the cities of Hamburg and Bremen, 60–70% of the inhabitants died. In Provence, Dauphiné, and Normandy, historians observe a decrease of 60% of fiscal hearths. In some regions, two thirds of the population was annihilated. In the town of Givry, in the Bourgogne region of France, the local friar, who used to note 28–29 funerals a year, recorded 649 deaths in 1348, half of them in September. About half the population of Perpignan died over the course of several months (only two of the eight physicians survived the plague). Over 60% of Norway's population died between 1348 and 1350. London may have lost two thirds of its population during the 1348–49 outbreak; England as a whole may have lost 70% of its population, which declined from 7 million before the plague to 2 million in 1400.
Some places, including the Kingdom of Poland, parts of Hungary, the Brabant region, Hainaut, and Limbourg (in modern Belgium), as well as Santiago de Compostela, were unaffected for unknown reasons. Some historians have assumed that the presence of resistant blood groups in the local population helped them resist infection, but the regions were touched by the second plague outbreak in 1360–1363 (the "little mortality") and later during the numerous resurgences of the plague (in 1366–1369, 1374–75, 1400, 1407 etc.). Other areas escaping the plague were isolated in mountainous regions such as the Pyrenees.